Hundreds of Colorado newspapers stolen after running story on alleged rape at police chief’s home

Nearly every copy of a newspaper vanished from the racks across a small town in the US, after its publisher ran a front-page story about a teen who was allegedly raped multiple times at a police chief’s house.

The Ouray County Plaindealer in Colorado first broke the story online.

In the report, three teenagers, including the police chief’s stepson, were accused of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl at a late-night drinking party at the police chief’s home.

Readers waiting for the physical copies of the newspaper on the morning of Jan 18 did not get them.

“All of our newspaper racks in Ouray and all but one rack in Ridgway were hit by a thief who stole all the newspapers,” said the weekly newspaper’s co-publisher Erin McIntyre in a newsletter to readers.

“It’s pretty clear that someone didn’t want the community to read the news this week,” she said.

But the theft only made her and her husband and co-publisher Mike Wiggins even more determined to share the story.

Mr Wiggins said in a post on X, formerly Twitter: “If you hoped to silence or intimidate us, you failed miserably. We’ll find out who did this. And another press run is imminent.”

They also

took down the paywall from the online story

, so people could read all the details, including claims that the police chief’s stepson and another teen had allegedly attempted to rape the girl when she was not fully conscious.

Mr Wiggins told the Associated Press (AP) that about 200 copies of the newspaper were stolen.

The person had opened all but one newspaper rack at a coffee shop, he said.

But by the evening of Jan 18, someone had returned a rubbish bag full of newspapers to the publishers.

Mr Wiggins told AP that he believed the person who returned the newspapers was the person who took them. He had reported the information to the police.

In her newsletter, Ms McIntyre said a suspect has since been identified, but the person appears to be unrelated to the defendants of the alleged sexual assault case and the Ouray police chief.

In a show of support, readers have donated US$2,000 to the newspaper after the theft. An unidentified person had also taped copies of the front-page story on the empty newspaper racks.

Executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition Jeffrey Roberts told The Durango Herald that the theft of the newspapers had amplified the impact of the story.

He said: “To think that stealing the newspapers from the rack is going to prevent people from knowing that is kind of silly in 2024.”